Jon Bishophttp://www.jonbishop.com
Creative TechnologyThu, 02 May 2019 06:06:13 +0000en-UShourly1Experiment: Philips Hue Audio Timeline Synchttp://www.jonbishop.com/2017/05/experiment-philips-hue-audio-timeline-sync/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2017/05/experiment-philips-hue-audio-timeline-sync/#commentsWed, 17 May 2017 17:24:55 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=9218Read more »]]>I’ve seen some cool demos of Hue lights automatically synced to music. This is mostly done by analyzing the volume of the track at any one point and assigning an effect to that range. Although that is pretty cool I wanted to compose my own light show inspired by some of the EDM shows I had been to recently.

I basically ended up creating a simple Javascript app that allows me to visualize when lights will be triggered in real time. The light effects are hard coded into the app as part of a long sequence of effects that get triggered at specific timestamps.

The interface allows me to start the song at any time and the lights will sync from that point on. This allows me to easily tweak timestamps/effects and rerun the app without having to listen to the entire song. I used the jsHue library to control my lights and the colors script from the Hue Hacking library to convert hex values to the CIE 1931 color space.

The app is mostly for fun when friends come over but you can see a demo video in the Instagram post below.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2017/05/experiment-philips-hue-audio-timeline-sync/feed/0Fluidity Between Creative & Technologyhttp://www.jonbishop.com/2017/05/fluidity-between-creative-technology/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2017/05/fluidity-between-creative-technology/#commentsWed, 17 May 2017 16:37:52 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=9187Read more »]]>Process is a hard thing to nail down at an agency. Creative & Technology trends change daily which give way to new roles and processes. Couple that with a constantly changing agency environment and you end up with an extremely circumstantial opportunity. It can take agencies years to find the right people and processes that work for them. Part of that process is how to maintain and update the process itself. It really comes down to the people and your culture.

The People

I like to work with people who are just as curious as I am. I learned how to program because I had ideas I wanted to see come to life. I’m passionate about the potential modern technology has to improve our lives. I’m also surrounded by people who are equally as passionate at accomplishing the same thing through their discipline of expertise. This is the single most important thing an agency should encourage if they wish to be creative and successful. We don’t want to be the ones reading blog posts about innovation, we want to be the ones writing those posts.

I also don’t believe in staying in your lane. I think its safe to assume most agency folks agree. The truth is we’re exposed to the outputs of each others jobs daily and like I mentioned above, those outputs are changing daily. A copywriter working with someone from the search team on a regular basis is going to start to pick up some trends that help streamline that relationship in the long run. The same thing happens with Creative and Technology. Creative, Copy, UX, Dev, Search, Analytics, etc all start to blend together where we all have our subject matter experts but we can be more effective because of the extended feedback. The more siloed we keep these disciplines, the less likely we are to find room for process optimization.

You have to be open to working this way. It can help streamline complex workflows but only if collaboration across teams is encouraged. This means dropping any ego associated with your team’s deliverable to incorporate feedback from other teams or working with other teams to education them on how to give better feedback.

Understanding Clients

Approach every project differently depending on the clients expectations and capabilities. A strong united front on the agency side helps better foster trust with the client which can simplify workflows and processes. I see a lot of people try to find the one process that works best for them and as a result they end up falling back to more traditional waterfall-like processes that can often stifle creativity and innovation.

A bunch of tools have popped up to help us solve this problem allowing us to select the best tool for the job. I think deliverables like style tiles and CSS component systems are great steps in the right direction. Even things like low-fidelity wires and then functional prototypes in favor of high-fidelity wires can help get to an iterative state of a project a lot faster. This only really works if you have the trust and klout to sell in. If the client feels out of the loop or deliverables aren’t properly explained or translated for the client it could prolong the process as new deliverables are introduced to fill the client knowledge gap.

It’s a balancing act however we can control the conversation with the correct level of trust both internally and externally.

The Culture

One of the best things you can do as a manager in an agency environment is to empower your team members. A developer or designer that gets into UX is going to be a bad ass UX designer or developer. A data analyst that gets into programming is going to be a kick ass data programmer. Encouraging these types of evolutions can help you keep an edge in an industry where titles change as fast as the trends that encourage their existence.

We also need to be flexible when it comes to work environments. How productive or creative we are is directly related to our mental states at that time. Most of the time your office will work just fine because you are constantly surrounded by people that bring you up and motivate your through their own inspirational actions. Other times you’ll be more productive in a shared work space or working from home. Agencies that can cater to the changing needs of their employees in this manner will not only do a better job retaining them but will increase the quality of their output.

Better Together

At the end of the day, who’s to say someone is or is not creative. I believe we are all creative at heart and express it through different mediums. In a digital agency we are all creative and we are all digital. It’s the mashup of backgrounds, expertise and passions that lead to better products. Learning to work better together helps us do better work.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2017/05/fluidity-between-creative-technology/feed/1Experiment: Getting Train Times From Google Homehttp://www.jonbishop.com/2017/02/experiment-getting-train-times-google-home/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2017/02/experiment-getting-train-times-google-home/#commentsFri, 17 Feb 2017 14:29:33 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=9229Read more »]]>Since I got my Google Home I’ve been exploring all the ways I can use it in my daily life. When Google opened up Actions using APi.AI I jumped right in and built the first useful thing I could think of. The app itself is pretty simple, it parses an excel file I downloaded off the MBTA website to find the next available train time. It supports a few different queries and find the correct time based on the day of the week.

I have no plans to develop this further but have offered to send the code to the city in case they would like to develop it out themselves. You can see it in action in the Instagram post below. I was having a bit of fun with it so please forgive the unorthodox dialogue flow.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2017/02/experiment-getting-train-times-google-home/feed/031 Inspiring Web Experienceshttp://www.jonbishop.com/2015/08/31-inspiring-web-experiences/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2015/08/31-inspiring-web-experiences/#commentsTue, 18 Aug 2015 02:01:53 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=9078Read more »]]>Every few days I check awwwards.com and reddit for creative new websites. As discussed in a previous post about the potential of modern websites, we can display content and engage users in ways we never thought possible. I’ve tried to collect a good representation of what is possible to hopefully give you inspiration for your next project.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2015/08/31-inspiring-web-experiences/feed/0The Potential of Modern Websiteshttp://www.jonbishop.com/2015/08/potential-modern-websites/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2015/08/potential-modern-websites/#commentsTue, 18 Aug 2015 02:00:46 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=9110Read more »]]>Modern browsers have the potential to create experiences that break the mold of traditional brochure style websites. These experiences cross devices and truly engage users. It’s all made possible by evolving browsers that are capable of a lot more than originally intended.

In this post we’ll cover a few of the technologies that are pushing browsers and the internet forward.

CSS3

In the beginning, if you wanted to create an interactive experience you had to use Flash or a similar 3rd party technology. CSS was good for basic styling but you ultimately had to resort to an HTML table based layout if you wanted full control over the structure of your site.

Now, we can accomplish many of the things previously only possible with Flash with pure CSS. CSS3 allows developers to not only style their sites but create engaging cross device animations and effects. These effects range from subtle user experience cues to interactive games and videos.

Javascript

In the beginning, JavaScript was an easy way to add basic interactivity to sites. It was clunky and often confused the most seasoned developers.

Now, JavaScript powers the web equivalents of applications like Microsoft Word and Photoshop right in your browser. JavaScript, like CSS3, has finally matured to the point developers are using it for both the front end and back end of their sites. Libraries like jQuery helped get it to where it is today and libraries like Angular will keep pushing it forward. Now you can use it for a lot more than just validating forms and sorting tables.

Media

In the beginning, audio and video were only possible with Flash or a similar 3rd party technology. See a trend here? Some of my earliest jobs as a developer were building custom Flash players and media galleries.

Now, we can use Audio and Video in a similar way to how we would add images to our sites. Using browser APIs we can take better control of online media to create experiences that are part of the website and not just within it. There are still a few hurdles to get over but we’re a lot better off than where we started.

Websockets

In the beginning, data was slow and resource intensive. Websites were pretty static and dynamic content took the form of Flash intros and embedded video clips.

Now, data moves in near real time allowing developers to connect devices and people without breaking the experience. Websockets enable developers to push content to the browser versus the earlier method of having to continuously check for new content. As a result we can create a new type of social experience.

Local Storage

In the beginning, everything lived on the server and browsers were limited in what they could store locally.

Now, we can store data in browsers allowing for more efficient data transfer and offline access to content. This is a must have for any modern-day web application so your content is always available.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2015/08/potential-modern-websites/feed/1Panel Discussion: WordPress Development Processhttp://www.jonbishop.com/2015/07/panel-discussion-wordpress-development-process/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2015/07/panel-discussion-wordpress-development-process/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 15:11:11 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=9099Read more »]]>People are still buzzing about this year’s Boston WordCamp. The organizers did an amazing job and their were a ton of excellent talks.

This year I jumped in on a last minute panel discussion about WordPress development process. It was a great panel with a very diverse background. I was most interested to hear how other agencies were approaching the development process and there were definitely some takeaways I’ve already begun to incorporate into my own agency’s process. The discussion covers everything from project management to wireframing and passing off assets. Some of my favorite tidbits included interactive style guides and a “no PSDs” rule.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2015/07/panel-discussion-wordpress-development-process/feed/0Personalized Contenthttp://www.jonbishop.com/2015/02/personalized-content/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2015/02/personalized-content/#commentsThu, 12 Feb 2015 03:02:08 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=9071Read more »]]>If you Google 2015 digital marketing trends the clear winner is anything to do with content marketing. If this is a surprise you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of years. Quality content is currency in the digital world as brands fight for eyeballs. What is obviously a clear trend will continue to dominate the digital marketing space until we reach what I like to call “The Honest Web“. There are still obstacles to overcome but the tools are finally available to create the user experience consumers desire.

Surfacing Relevant Content

A problem most social networks face once they move past the early adopter phase is how to manage the inescapable echo chamber they create. Another problem lies in managing the account, especially for someone who needs to be guided if they’re new to social media. The Simply Gram website solves this issue for people who are still getting an idea of how social media works. There are a number of factors that come into play when trying to figure out the best content to surface.

Blogs try to solve this problem by recommending related and popular posts.

Twitter tries to solve it by surfacing content from influential users.

Facebook tries to solve it by surfacing popular content from within your own network.

(Also read: Malta SEO helps you with your SEO requirements and sees to it that your website has a higher ranking and visibility in the results of various search engines)

The key is to identify how users interact with your content and design the experience around their usage patterns. There is no one size fits all approach and we must truly understand our users if we’re going to create the best personalized experience. We need to take every factor into account and acknowledge as Malcolm Gladwell does in this Ted Talk that sometimes our users aren’t even sure what they really want.

User Generated Content

As much as we want to own our content, the conversation will continue to happen around us unless we are willing to share our space with consumers. Social networks aren’t going anywhere but there are opportunities to create engaging experiences by inviting consumers to become part of the brand’s public image

One interesting site I had the pleasure of working on even encourages musicians to let fans help them write their next song. Hookist is a community designed around its users. The artist ultimately has creative control but fans are heavily involved in the process. In some of its first games, lead singer of the Crash Test Dummies, Brad Roberts, even changed his original creative direction based on the direction of the community. It’s a very specific case but the asynchronous relationship between the artist and their fans created a whole new level of engagement that previously didn’t exist.

It’s not enough to just let users create profiles and submit content but let your users help guide the direction of your content. Successful marketers don’t just create good content but also implement effective Content Management strategies on how they react to the content of the people interacting.

Interoperability

Context is king and its becoming harder and harder to create experiences that fit every situation. The middle man has now become the final destination with services like Google Now which surface content before users even search for it. New standards for how to format your content give way to newer standards. The best we can do is try to keep up by embracing these standards as they evolve. They could take the form of a single location that houses all of our content which we then pull into our own properties. They could also take the form of distributed content that services like Google Now consolidate and surface at the most relevant time and place.

It’s important to think about how your content will not only be shared but syndicated. We’ve lost control to our users and now we’re starting to lose control to the Internet itself as it uses our content as data in its massive web of information. Think about the opportunities that exist beyond your own site as people continue to interact with your content in ways they never even intended. Content doesn’t always take the form of a five paragraph blog post.

The Way Forward

It’s hard to fully realize the impact these changes have on our content marketing initiatives until we fully understand the benefits content has to help us fully meet our goals. We need to start changing the way we think about content and how users are interacting with it. It’s not as black and white as we once thought and to get control we have to give up a little. Think about all the different forms our content takes and realize the possibilities for what it can take in the future. If we’re open to this type of personalized content we can be the ones to help move it forward and make it work for us.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2015/02/personalized-content/feed/0Technology and Thinking Bighttp://www.jonbishop.com/2014/08/technology-and-thinking-big/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2014/08/technology-and-thinking-big/#commentsWed, 20 Aug 2014 20:12:28 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=9033Read more »]]>As a Creative Technologist I am regularly challenged with the task of coming up with big creative technology integrations. With something that seems to change so rapidly, how do you stay on top of current trends and more importantly how do you build on these advancements.

In this post I’ll share my approach to big thinking with technology. First we’ll explore some of the more important components to be mindful of during the brainstorm process and then we’ll get into more specific ways you can continue to stay ahead of the game.

The Truth About Original Ideas

First we need to accept a hard truth. Original ideas are almost non-existent in this day and age. People like to argue me on this but it’s less about the truth itself and more about the mindset it encourages. Our ideas are really just the recollection of previous thoughts and experiences re-purposed for the case at hand.

I help teach a marketing class at Boston University and our brand insights group shows the students an awesome video about how easily we can be manipulated. Derren Brown, who admittedly I am a geek about, meets up with two of the top creative advertising minds in London. They are tasked with coming up with a name, slogan and some creative for a new company and have a half hour to do it. Long story short, Derren pretty much predicts the outcome by controlling what the creatives see on their way over to meet with Derren.

So rather than fight this truth I like to embrace it. Instead of constantly trying to find something new or original I try to make things better by finding ways to add more value.

Bad Ideas Lead To Good Ideas

I had the wonderful opportunity to take part in some digital marketing brainstorms for a popular children’s toy brand. We worked alongside representatives from Facebook, Google and another agency I have huge respect for. The only rule going into the brainstorms was “Don’t poop in the pool”. Basically, anything goes. Even if you know something is physically impossible continue to explore and push the idea until it becomes something more tangible.

Being creative in groups can be intimidating, especially when you’re dealing with big egos. This rule puts everyone on a level playing field and encourages true collaboration. It’s something I constantly remind myself of and is a lot of fun to yell out in a meeting when someone is squashing ideas.

Always Be Learning

I’m in an industry where it pays to know a little about everything over a lot about some things. I can’t physically know everything but I’ve developed routines that allow me to make the best use of my time while seemingly keeping up with popular trends.

The key is to find what works best for you. For me, I rely heavily on Reddit, Circa, RSS Feeds and internal collaboration at my company. I’ve found ways to consume content efficiently both on and offline and have even begun to consolidate things I find interesting on a site I’ve created called Think.JonBishop.com (Work in progress).

I don’t read every word of every article I find and I often fast forward through videos. The goal is to just get the main idea and move on. It becomes just another idea or experience I can draw on later.

No One Is Smarter Than You, Just Different

I prefer large brainstorms to small ones because together we just have more collective experience. No single person in that brainstorm is smarter than another because we all know things the others do not. Our individual experiences are all unique and make us who we are. Some of my favorite digital extensions to campaigns have come from non-digital folks talking about a real life problem or experience and together we were able to create something extraordinary.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Technology

I find people know more about technology than they realize. Technology is not the code the drives it or the hardware that makes it do things. It’s the tools we use to make our lives easier. By thinking about it in the abstract we better understand its purpose and can help bring it to the next level. Technology exists to add value to our lives by solving problems and making our lives easier. Through that context we can help push it forward and truly think big.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2014/08/technology-and-thinking-big/feed/0Experiment: The Instant No Buttonhttp://www.jonbishop.com/2014/08/experiment-instant-button/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2014/08/experiment-instant-button/#commentsTue, 12 Aug 2014 20:14:20 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=9239Read more »]]>The button came about after Scott Stratten of Unmarketing sent out a tweet asking for some quick flash work. I responded and the button was completed and sent back to Scott in a few minutes. Scott then worked his magic, slapped a cool graphic on top and created nooooooooooooooo.com. We’ve since converted the button over to HTML5 so it works on all modern devices.

It’s crazy how the internet works. I no longer do Flash work, in fact that may have been my last Flash project, but it still drives a ton of traffic to this site. nooooooooooooooo.com still gets thousands of views per day and every once and awhile I stumble across it in the comments section of a reddit thread.

On the one hand, native advertising can seem deceiving simply because the content is not organic and is only tailored for that audience to feel organic. On the other hand, it’s a step in the right direction from all the interruption marketing that dominates the web. However, as we shift into a more consumer driven, on demand world, it’s important for brands to disclose their relationships to maintain consumer’s trust. We come across some reliable sites like inexpensive banner printing by 1DayBanner.com. Sponsored posts and even advertorials are still forms of interruption marketing.

The Perception

Here’s an excellent video from the incredibly talented John Oliver talking about native advertising in journalism:

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome is the perception people have of native advertising. This isn’t the sponsored TV programming of the 50′s. It’s up to us to create truly unique and engaging content. It also requires a level of transparency we’re only recently becoming comfortable with. Consumers have unprecedented access to information about your business and even more ways to share it.

Next Steps

As I said before, native ads are still a step in the right direction. I just believe a lot of that same content can and should live within the brand’s owned properties. The next logical step is for brands to take ownership of their consumers needs and just lay it all out there. Take that same “consumer first” approach that’s been embraced by the native advertising movement and apply it to your own website and blog. I think we’ll get to a point where the brands that truly have the best products will have nothing to hide and those that do not simply won’t be able to compete. Consumers purchasing decisions are already driven by word of mouth and reviews now more than ever. People are going to dig up the dirt whether you like it or not.

I think native ads are an early permutation of the future of digital marketing. It’s painfully obvious that all other forms of interruption marketing are on the decline. Content, social media and other forms of consumer driven marketing will continue to shape how brands create and maintain relationships with consumers in the future. Everything is already on-demand and it will continue that way as technologies become more advanced. Please don’t buy your way into my morning social media rituals. I’ll Google you when I need you.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2014/08/native-advertising-and-whats-next/feed/0WordPress Starter Themes and Development Tipshttp://www.jonbishop.com/2014/03/wordpress-starter-themes-development-tips/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2014/03/wordpress-starter-themes-development-tips/#commentsSun, 02 Mar 2014 00:17:00 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=9005Read more »]]>WordPress starter themes are themes that include the bare minimum needed to start building out a new theme. For this reason I usually call them WordPress developer theme frameworks. They exist to help jump-start the development process on new sites.

In this post I’ll share my favorite WordPress starter themes, some resources to help with theme development and my overall favorite WordPress theme.

My Top Three WordPress Themes

Joints is based on my favorite rapid prototyping tool and CSS framework, Foundation. There are several ports of Foundation over to WordPress however Joints is my favorite for its simplicity and ease of customization. It’s really the bare minimum needed to get started. JonBishop.com is built on Joints.

Roots is truly a powerful and unique starter theme. It is based on HTML5 Boilerplate and comes bundled with Bootstrap. Roots goes farther than Joints and Bones by actually introducing a new way of loading what they call your “base format code”. It’s a bit different from the templating model we know and love but the intentions are good.

My Theme Development Tools

I covered these themes in a talk I did for the Boston WordPress meetup. During the talk I elaborated on some of the tools I use while developing new WordPress sites. You can check out the talk at the bottom of this post.

I work with a team of developers on most of our WordPress sites so we needed an easy way to maintain local development environments without having to constantly change our config files. This post has some excellent tips for working extending the wp-config.php file to make local development easier.

As part of a team we also needed an easy way to collaborate on different projects. We started with SVN but eventually moved on to Git, mostly because of the popularity of GitHub but also because of its simpler workflow and the fact that it doesn’t create a .git folder in every one of our directories like SVN does.

Less and Sass are an easier way to write CSS. They use a more intuitive syntax and provide extra functionality to streamline the frontend development process. One of the perks of Less and Sass is the ability to compile a single CSS file from multiple files making it easier to compartmentalize your code into more logical chunks.

Grunt is a Javascript task runner. Besides being the “cool kid in town”, it’s a very powerful tool to have at your disposal. Once again, while working on teams, having a single gruntfile shared across all environments ensures you are all producing the same quality code for distribution.

My Favorite WordPress Theme

This would be the opposite of a starter theme. Basically the opposite of everything we just talked about. This is hands down the best WordPress theme I’ve ever worked with. I’ve used it on several sites now to quickly get a unique, professional site up in a few hours.

There are too many features to list off but basically Divi is a drag and drop interface where you have complete control over everything being displayed. You control the sections, columns and the content (modules) with sittings like:

Full bleed background images and videos

Parallax effects on images and content

Complete control of section, column and content colors

What sets this theme apart from others with a drag and drop interface is the final product. This theme incorporates all the most modern design patterns and techniques. I’m excited to see how future Elegant Themes use this framework.

BostonWP Talk About WordPress Starter Themes

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2014/03/wordpress-starter-themes-development-tips/feed/2The Opportunities With User-Generated Contenthttp://www.jonbishop.com/2013/08/the-opportunities-with-user-generated-content/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/08/the-opportunities-with-user-generated-content/#commentsTue, 20 Aug 2013 02:20:48 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=8749Read more »]]>It’s pretty hard these days to put together a digital marketing campaign without a user-generated content (UGC) layer built-in. At the very least we ask our users to share offers with their friends on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

What Is User Generated Content?

User generated content is a broad term used to describe content that is uploaded to the internet. It generally encompasses a wide range of digital media including “question-answer databases, digital video, blogging, podcasting, forums, review-sites, social networking, social media, mobile phone photography and wikis”.

For the purpose of this post we’ll talk about user-generated content as it relates to your business.

The Opportunities

What makes UGC such a hot topic these days? As new platforms and APIs become available, marketers have the ability to create more targeted UGC efforts. These tools allow for easier engagement with lower barriers to entry. As a result we are seeing more powerful campaigns with deeper levels of engagement.

Just look at what Olapic is doing for its customers. Olapic is a platform that eliminates a lot of the pains you might encounter from manually curating photos on Instagram. Its features include duplication detection, analytics, multiple ways for users to submit photos and multiple ways to integrate the photos into your site. Offerpop is another solution if you’re looking for a more all-inclusive marketing platform. They provides multiple types of UGC in the form of video/photo contests, voting, caption contests and more.

User generated content platforms are also getting more sophisticated in the form of social data platforms that simplify the pains of working with multiple APIs to aggregate social feeds. Company’s like DataSiftand Gnipoffer services that give developers access to a ton of social data in more digestible chunks. This enables marketers to extract deep insights from what was previously unmanageable data.

Key Takeaways

We’ve gone beyond traditional UGC efforts in the form of Yelp reviews and blog comments and begun to enable users to engage through social channels at a deeper level where they are already active. A properly run UGC campaign can be an endless wealth of free content not to mention an invaluable source of real-time consumer insights.

There’s also something to said about the consumer benefits of UGC campaigns. You’re recognizing and enabling community members to express themselves, earn rewards, become famous and have a little fun. In a world where consumers have more control over a brands image, embracing this movement creates long-lasting connections and increases overall loyalty.

Conclusion

With so many opportunities for exciting and engaging user-generated content efforts it can be easy to fall into the same old traps. We need to move beyond just asking people to share things and encourage more authentic engagement.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/08/the-opportunities-with-user-generated-content/feed/1The Honest Webhttp://www.jonbishop.com/2013/08/the-honest-web/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/08/the-honest-web/#commentsSun, 11 Aug 2013 18:02:32 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=8813Read more »]]>As internet powerhouses like Google and Facebook continue to change the way they analyze and interpret user data, it’s about time we stop fighting back and embrace the change. The early days of marketing on the internet involved a lot of the same old practices of interrupting the user experience to try to make an impression. As we progress into a future where our digital and real lives intersect it’s time for a bigger mindshift to take place.

How It Should Work

Now imagine a world where consumers want something, they Google it, and the best resource on the topic is a blog post by the brand that mostly closely meets their needs. In this same world, imagine that blog post by the brand is actually the authority on the topic. Maybe that post transparently discloses flaws and other use cases the same way Amazon reviews might. This is not far off from the direction we’re headed with the rise of content marketing and native ads. We’re headed into an era where brands are rewarded for their honesty with increased loyalty. This, my friends, is awesome.

A Natural Progression

Just look at the early days of search engine optimization. A lot of what was once best practice is now considered black-hat and deceitful. Google focuses all of their efforts on serving up the most relevant content to its users. That means it’s up to brands to develop relevant content that can outperform UGC powerhouses like Amazon and Wikipedia.

Next lets look at Facebook. As brands started to recognize the opportunities on a network like Facebook, they swarmed there with the single goal of getting as many likes as possible. Because more likes meant more reach, right? Turns out just because a user likes a brand page doesn’t mean they want to subscribe to their e-newsletter. Facebook recognized this and tweaked their algorithms to only show content in news feeds that was most relevant to the user. Now posts from brands only show up if users regularly engage with that brands content.

The Semantic Web

Originally proposed by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of what we today call the internet, the semantic web is an effort to standardize how we represent things in code so computers can interpret them as well as humans. The semantic web ties in well to my idea of the honest web as we began to represent entities online as more than just web pages. The semantic web even makes up the virtual representations of ourselves.

What if the internet as we know it today is only a small blip in a larger trend towards digital. These machine readable online entities form a graph of information that the next generation of services can tap into for finding better content faster. Google Now is already taking advantage of this trend and essentially cuts out the middle man while users shop, browse reviews, check movie times, monitor traffic and more.

Conclusion

As the web continues to evolve there will be fewer opportunities to game the system and we’ll be forced to change how we represent ourselves online. People online will no longer just be a screen name and avatar but extensions of their real world selves. Understanding this is the key to understanding the future of digital marketing. Consumers are changing their usage patterns faster than the marketing world can adapt. It’s time to embrace these changes and put forth efforts that benefit the community.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/08/the-honest-web/feed/2Rethinking The Facebook Like Gatehttp://www.jonbishop.com/2013/08/rethinking-the-facebook-fan-gate/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/08/rethinking-the-facebook-fan-gate/#commentsMon, 05 Aug 2013 21:13:58 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=8554Read more »]]>Facebook is constantly making changes (that’s not the first time I’ve started a blog post with those words). It’s part of who they are and ultimately it’s a good thing for all of us.

My argument is that like gates are a bad user experience and a barrier to entry for what could become good relationships. Like’s are not subscriptions although it’s an easy comparison to make. Facebook works very hard to serve up the posts it thinks its users will like. That’s what keeps users coming back. Facebook knows when a user likes your page and never comes back. It also knows when a lot of people like your page and never come back. These are signals that these relationships may not have been created with the users interests in mind.

We’re continuing to optimize the news feed to show the posts that people are most likely to engage with, ensuring they see the most interesting stories. This aligns with our vision that all content should be as engaging as the posts you see from friends and family.

With these new Facebook changes it’s time to look at other methods of attracting fans and increasing engagement on your pages.

Alternatives To Like Gates

Content Marketing

Get a content marketing strategy in place to get fans interacting with your page. Videos and images tend to get more engagement than links and status updates. Videos and images are also more likely to keep your visitors on Facebook and browsing your page.

Facebook also says, “When people like or comment on your posts, their friends can see them connecting with your Page. This kind of word-of-mouth marketing is a great way to expand your audience.”

Contests Without Gates

Contests are still a great way to generate a little buzz and give back to your fans. You should still ask users who aren’t fans to like your page but as a way to get more offers, not as a barrier to entry. Displaying it on a thank you page with a strong call to action will attract people more willing to interact with your brand. Check out ContestsHQ on Facebook for more information on running more integrated contests.

Feed Games

Feed games allow you to create engaging rich media experiences within posts. The truth of the matter is people engage with posts more than they engage with apps and tabs on pages. Feed games work a lot like video posts, user presses play and the video plays. Feed games extend beyond video and allow to create interactive surveys, custom video players, contests and more.

Promoted Posts/Pin To Top

Put your Facebook posts to work. Facebook allow you to create promoted posts to try to extend your network to your fans’ friends. People trust recommendations from their friends however you can also promote your posts by specifying specific targets. Either way promoting your posts is an easy way to expand your network. Just make sure the post has enough value to drive real engagement.

You can also pin valuable posts to the top of your page so it’s the first thing people see. Since Facebook users are more likely to view your news feed than pages tabs this is a great place to convert these visitors to fans with a strong call to action.

Partner With Other Brands

Facebook suggests working with other brands by cross promoting on each other’s pages. If you mention someone else’s page on your page, users can hover over the name to get an overview of the target page. These fans are also more likely to engage with your content which in turn exposes it to more of their audience.

Social Plugins

Facebook’s social plugins were built to make integration with your site easy. If you have a like button on your website make sure you turn on “Show Faces”. In Facebook’s Like Button Best practices it says “People are twice as likely to click on a Like button when they see a friend’s face next to it.

Conclusion

The theme here is to keep it real and focus on building relationships. Check out Facebook’s marketing page for more tips. Facebook is more powerful than we give it credit for. Fan gates are an old way of thinking and have no place on a platform that focuses on relationships and engagement. Now please go follow me on Twitter and like my company’s page for more awesome stuff like this.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/08/rethinking-the-facebook-fan-gate/feed/1Did WordPress Do That?http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/06/wordpress/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/06/wordpress/#commentsSun, 30 Jun 2013 16:28:07 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=8169Read more »]]>WordPress is tremendously powerful, mostly because of its enthusiastic community. I’m constantly surprised at how many people still think WordPress is just for blogging. Check out this pie chart that shows CMS distribution across thousands of websites. WordPress is easily the most popular.

What I thought was even cooler was that WordPress did a survey of its users awhile back and found that something like 60% of respondents use WordPress just as a CMS, 30% as a CMS and a blog, and a small percentage as just a blog.

I usually tell people, WordPress isn’t the best because it’s doing anything dramatically different than other similar content management systems. It’s the best because it’s the easiest to use and has the largest community.

Some interesting points from the presentation:

Best Buy uses WordPress multisite to power over 1000 local store blogs

We’re already seeing WordPress used for:

Ecommerce

Social Networks

Job Boards

Education

Geolocation

SaaS

Blog and E-Book publisher

Taking WordPress to the next level

Front End editing

Mobile editing

Manage multiple individual installs from central location

Let me know how you are using WordPress

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/06/wordpress/feed/1Two Thoughts That Get Me Byhttp://www.jonbishop.com/2013/06/my-two-simple-truths/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/06/my-two-simple-truths/#commentsTue, 25 Jun 2013 19:19:49 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=8587Read more »]]>I don’t really get into the motivational stuff on this blog which is funny because I love to give advice in real life. I jumped into the workforce a bit earlier than some of my friends which has given me time to figure out what I want to do. It’s been about 9 years and I’ve jumped around a lot. Ultimately, the moving around gave me increased confidence in my abilities not to mention just the experiences of the different work environments.

Sometimes it was stressful or intimidating walking into situations where I may have felt a bit over my head. Every single time it worked out for the better and I can more easily navigate those road blocks if they occur again.

For some of my friends just diving into the workforce I’ve been sharing some of my experiences and ideas that got me through them.

You will always know more than some people and not as much as others

All I could ever hope for is that I’m learning from those smarter than me and helping those trying to catch up. Everyone has something they can give back. Every new experience is an opportunity to learn and a story we can share with others.

When I do things like speak at a meetup or talk to a client during a project review I just try to remember, they know more than me about what they do best and I know more than them at what I do best. They don’t expect me to be the best and only that I work with them to help understand what I already know. No one’s going to yell at you or boo you off stage if you just try your best.

No one’s got it figured out, we’re all just very good at pretending

I can be the king of being awkward. Most of my friends have seen me at my best but others might be convinced I’ve got it together. The truth is none of us have it figured out. Some of us think we do and for the most part we go about our days being normal. Or at least this is what I tell myself.

The next time you feel out-of-place or in over your head, just remember you always have something to contribute and put on your game face. You would be amazed at how far confidence gets you in life … even if you’re just pretending.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/06/my-two-simple-truths/feed/1How I Get The Most Out Of TweetDeckhttp://www.jonbishop.com/2013/02/how-i-get-the-most-out-of-tweetdeck/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/02/how-i-get-the-most-out-of-tweetdeck/#commentsWed, 20 Feb 2013 17:21:20 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=8576Read more »]]>As soon as the first Twitter clients allowed for multiple column views I was on board. I bounced between Seesmic, TweetDeck and HootSuite but always came back to TweetDeck. So while these clients can achieve similar functionality I will be talking about how I specifically use TweetDeck.

Managing Multiple Accounts

The first column in my TweetDeck is my public stream for JonDBishop. I try to check this regularly because, well, that’s the point. Or at least that was my original intent. I’ve tried to keep the number of people I follow down to a reasonable number but it still becomes hard to manage. I just try to remember it’s there and from time to time I still engage in a conversation or click a link I find interesting.

Search Terms

My number one advice for people learning how to use Twitter is to learn how to use Twitter Search. There are terms you can add to your search query that filter your results based on location, sentiment, date and more.

You can also generalize sentiment and context pretty well with Twitter because of the way we progressed from texting and chat rooms to micro-blogging. As pointed out in “How to Use Advanced Twitter Search” you can use punctuation marks and emoticons to find people asking questions, complaining or falling in love.

I use all of this to create columns within TweetDeck that are extremely focused and service specific purposes.

For example, I have one column that looks for people looking for help with or talking about WordPress, WordPress plugins or WordPress themes.

(wp OR wordpress) (help OR need OR know OR plugin OR theme) -filter:links

To be honest, I used to use advanced search queries a lot more than I do currently in my day-to-day. There are still times where it comes in really handy like when you are participating in or going to events.

Twitter Lists

Most of my TweetDeck column are custom Twitter lists I’ve curated over time. The main benefit of lists is that you don’t have to deal with all the noise and spam from the public stream. The key is to continue to add and remove people as needed to keep your lists relevant.

I use about 8 lists in my TweetDeck and have another 8 I will swap in and out. My core ones consist of people I work with, friends and family. Then I have two lists for Boston; one for people I think are influential and one for news. Then I have a few lists for my different online and real life networks.

Publishing

When I’m not sorting through my different TweetDeck columns, I’m probably posting something … or working. I usually use Buffer to schedule posts but having the ability to schedule posts within TweetDeck is nice because the free version of Buffer only lets you work with one account.

Overall I will continue to use TweetDeck as my desktop client mostly because I’m familiar with it. Please share your favorite feature of your favorite client in the comments below.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/02/how-i-get-the-most-out-of-tweetdeck/feed/0Making Your Website Socialhttp://www.jonbishop.com/2013/02/making-your-website-social/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/02/making-your-website-social/#commentsSun, 10 Feb 2013 21:44:17 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=8607This post was written by Jon Bishop and Zac Champigny (Website, LinkedIn, Twitter). Zac is an Online Marketing Strategist with several years of experience working with online technologies. He recently spent 6 months in Medellin, Colombia expanding his knowledge of marketing, SEO, branding, social media, and business on the front lines of an up and coming website.

How Do You Make Your Website Social?

It’s a popular question with a not so straightforward answer. With everyone talking about social media, how can websites easily adopt online social technologies to increase engagement across their brand.

Start With a Social Media Presence

The easiest way to dive in is to get set up on popular social media sites. Start to foster a community off of your site so when you start to bring them in they will engage and share more.

Make sure you advertise your social accounts somewhere on your site at least displaying links to your social profiles on your contact page.

Maintain A Blog

One of the benefits of having a blog is you are giving the world something to share and an opportunity to tell your brand’s story. Your blog centralizes your brand’s voice and becomes a home base for further engagement.

The additional engagement can come in the form of comments or trackbacks. Allowing consumers to engage with their brand at it’s heart is incredibly powerful and helps create lasting impressions. This is also an opportunity for the brand to engage back to further nurture relationships within the community.

Social Widgets

Most of the top social media sites make it really easy to get content from those sites onto your own website (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest). The important thing is to not go overboard and focus on the content your users will get the most use of.

Also, get creative. Displaying your Facebook posts in your sidebar doesn’t provide too much value. Displaying comments from a targeted Facebook campaign in place of testimonials can be a more impactful way of giving your reader added social proof.

Start a Forum

Forums may not be for every site, but they can be very handy resources. A forum can foster brand loyalty by offering support and customer service, as well as a place for a community to form.

They also provide a place for people to see what others are saying about a brand, how the brand interacts with customers, and to connect with others interested in that brand. A lot of people will have the same questions about your products or companies. By focusing them in one place Google can help other’s with the same questions find your site

Promote and Host Events

Social media is only another medium within the realm of social interaction. You are not limited to tweeting at people from afar. You can use these tools to leverage opportunities to meet people interested in your niche or brand in real life, creating lasting memories of shared value.

Start promoting and attending meetups, tweetups, webinars, conferences, lectures, and other social networking opportunities. Meetup.com could be a good place to start connecting.

Reviews

If you are a brick and mortar shop or selling a product, you should look into displaying user-generated reviews on your site. Conversations about your brand are already happening on sites like Yelp, Glassdoor and Google Reviews so you should at least be paying attention.

If you pride yourself in your good reviews, why not display them right on your site. They are real-time pieces of content about an experience that you can then share yourself back to your community.

RSS and Email Lists

RSS syndication allows for people to have whatever content you post sent to their personal readers. This let’s people stay current with what is going on with your site. Make sure they know this is an option to them.

Email lists allow you to send more direct messages to users that may be interested in more behind the scenes stuff, special offers, or extra interesting content. If you offer good value in a newsletter or use it as a way to connect with users, it may result in more brand loyalty and content sharing.

Wrap-up

It’s no question engaging users on multiple levels is a strategy that is going to bring you more long-term success when it comes to building relationships and loyalty to your brand or message. There are many options available to you, but the most important thing you can do is identify why you should be connecting and what you can contribute. It’s not enough to just put all of this stuff up on your site like a big net. You have to engage people and offer them value. Don’t just make a Facebook page, offer value on that page. Don’t just make an email list, give something to people that makes lending you their ear worth their time.

]]>http://www.jonbishop.com/2013/02/making-your-website-social/feed/0Creating Presentations With Custom Post Typeshttp://www.jonbishop.com/2012/09/creating-presentations-with-custom-post-types/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2012/09/creating-presentations-with-custom-post-types/#commentsMon, 03 Sep 2012 23:29:24 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=8494Read more »]]>I wanted to come up with a cool way to showcase how powerful custom post types were for the Boston WordPress meetup. So I put together a quick little plugin that showcases:

Creating custom post types

Creating custom taxonomies

Creating custom labels for your custom post type

Creating contextual help for your custom post type

Using a custom template in a plugin for your custom post type

Sorting and displaying content in our custom post types in a unique way

The Design

Our plugin will use a custom post type to hold the slides and a custom taxonomy to bind them all together. Our plugin will use a custom template that we will conditionally load when viewing a taxonomy archive. For usability sake, we will redirect individual links to slides to the appropriate slide within the presentation view.

This creates a custom post type named Slides. Notice within register_post_type(), we prefixed our custom post type with ‘cpt’. This is so our custom post type plugin doesn’t conflict with other plugins that might create a ‘slide’ custom post type.

We also set up the appropriate labels for our custom post type and passed them in to to register_post_type() via the $args array.

Another key in $args lets us tell WordPress which features our custom post type supports. For our plugin, our slides will need a title, some content, an author and page attributes so we can sort our slides.

For good measure, let’s also create some custom admin messages for our custom post type.

Same as with our custom post type, we prefix our custom taxonomy so it won’t conflict with other taxonomies called ‘presentation’.

Add Contextual Help For Our Custom Post Type

Maybe this is just a pet peeve of mine, but I strongly believe if a plugin adds functionality to the WordPress admin, it should provide contextual help that describes how to use that functionality. It’s really easy to do and ultimately creates a better user experience.

Add Custom Columns To Custom Post Type List

Managing our slides from our new custom post type post list can become cumbersome to manage as the number of slides increase. Something I try to do with all of my custom post types is to tailor the columns to better fit the post types purpose. In this case we should probably add the presentation name and the order within the presentation as columns on our slide list.

There’s a lot going on here, so I’ll break it down by function/filter.

The cptslides_edit_columns function in the manage_edit-cptslides_columns filter sets up our columns and their respective headers.

The cptslides_custom_columns function in the manage_posts_custom_column filter displays our custom column data for each slide. In this case we are making use of the built in menu_order page attribute to sort our slides within our presentations so we can just grab that from the global $post variable. For our custom taxonomy, we just grab the terms from the current post.

Up to this point our columns exist but aren’t sortable. The cptslides_column_register_sortable function in the manage_edit-cptslides_sortable_columns filter basically tells WordPress our column headers for our custom columns should be clickable. Just because they’re clickable, doesn’t mean we can sort anything yet.

The posts_orderby function in the cptslides_column_orderby filter makes our ‘Order’ column sortable. Basically it checks to see what the post list is currently being sorted by, and if it’s being sorted by order, we modify the query for the post list and order by our built in order page attribute.

Sorting custom taxonomies are a bit trickier because they are not inherently part of the query that generates our custom post list. The cptslides_position_clauses function in the posts_clauses filter solves that problem by creating joins on the term tables, grouping and ordering the results. The original author of this bit of code is Silviu-Cristian Burca (source).

Use A Custom Template For Our Custom Post Type

The great thing about custom post types is WordPress can automatically display your content without having to create a custom template. However, WordPress added support for single-type-templates in WP 3.0 and for archive-type-templates in WP 3.1. This allows you to easily create custom templates for your custom post types without any additional coding in our plugin.

But what if you wan’t your template to live within your plugin so it can be moved around independent of your theme? Fortunately this is also pretty easy with the template_include filter.

All this does is check to see if we are currently in a taxonomy or single page from our custom post type and pass in our custom template if we are.

The custom template in this case is a single file with the html5slides template code. All I’ve done is swapped in the existing content with the WordPress loop. I also use some query_posts() to modify the loop to display all slides within an archive and sort by menu_order.

Now when we view a presentation archive, we get a completed presentation with all of the slides loaded in the proper order.

Redirect Our Custom Post Type To A Taxonomy

At this point the plugin is pretty much done except for one pesky usability problem for the admin. If the admin tries to view a single slide, we see that slide outside of the context of the presentation. The ideal functionality would be to have that slide take you to that slide within the presentation. Because our plugin is using the html5slides library, we can just redirect the user to the presentation and append a number sign with our slide number to the URL so the presentation automatically jumps to the appropriate slide.

http://www.jonbishop.com/2012/09/creating-presentations-with-custom-post-types/feed/1Why You Should Check Out Your Local WordPress Meetuphttp://www.jonbishop.com/2012/08/why-you-should-check-out-your-local-wordpress-meetup/
http://www.jonbishop.com/2012/08/why-you-should-check-out-your-local-wordpress-meetup/#commentsSun, 12 Aug 2012 13:28:01 +0000http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=8125Read more »]]>I recently joined Kurt Eng as an organizer of the Boston WordPress Meetup. I also got to help organize and run this past Boston WordCamp. I’m pretty excited because I love the meetups as they are and I looking forward to contributing any way I can. If you haven’t been to a WordPress meetup yet I wanted share why you should care and why you should be attending.

Keeping Up With WordPress

A few months ago, I wrote a post discussing all the ways I keep up with developments in the WordPress community. Stephen Kane from the Orange County WordPress Meetup reached out to say he had shared the post at his own meetup. The great thing about attending monthly WordPress meetups is the collective knowledge of all things happening with WordPress so you don’t have to spend too much time trying to stay on top of what’s new. Everyone brings something new to the table and who better to learn from than each other.

Learn Something New

The great thing about these meetups is they adapt to meet the needs of the people who attend them. If you have a bunch of developers attending the meetup then you’re likely to get a good session about WordPress development. If there’s a healthy mix of developers and beginners then some meetups might do what we do at the Boston WordPress Meetup and split the session up into two rooms. Every topic is different from the last and attendees can recommend new topics through Meetup.com.

Meet Great People

Us WordPress folks are just great people all around. The type of people who attend these meetups are open to learning and meeting new people. There’s an awesome spirit of giving and camaraderie in the WordPress community that you can easily see at WordCamps and meetups.

Great Networking

Whether you’re a developer looking to pick up some extra work, or someone with an idea looking to hire a good developer. Maybe you’re a developer that just wants to meet other developers. WordPress meetups attract a very diverse audience with varying experience levels and needs. There’s some real talent in this space, especially here in Boston.

Get Your WordPress Questions Answered

I see a good number of developers and general users helping each other with their WordPress problems. Some meetups try to slot in some Q&A time where you can basically ask your question to the entire room. Maybe you can even recommend a topic for a future meetup that might answer your question. Ultimately, WordPress meetups are an excellent source to get help with WordPress.

Because It’s The Year Of The Meetup

Back in January, Jane Wells announced:

We hereby declare 2012 as the Year of the WordPress Meetup. You’ll want to get in on this action.

This basically means you can expect to see more meetups popping up around the country that will have access to better resources.

Why Do I Do It?

I just love having that time, once a month, where I get to geek out about something I’m passionate about. I love the people who come to the events and the friends I’ve made that keep coming back. It’s an awesome community that I’ve learned a lot from. I hope to keep learning and try to giving back whenever I get a chance.